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New Line Cinema
Classic horror film The Evil Dead is set to be brought back to life for a new U.S. TV series.
Filmmaker Sam Raimi resurrected his 1981 cult classic last year (13) for a reboot, which he co-wrote and produced with director Fede Alvarez, and now he is revisiting the scary project for a small screen adaptation.
Raimi has teamed up with his brother Ivan and original The Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell to create the show, according to movie blog Bloody-Disgusting.com.
Campbell has even suggested he will take on a leading role in the series after responding to a fan's comment about the upcoming programme on Twitter.com.
The devotee tweeted, "Only if (Campbell) is the STAR of this new tv series will I accept. Don't make a fool out of us long time fans", to which the veteran actor replied, "That's the plan."

Tristar PicturesWith the Saw franchise coming to an end in 2010 and the Paranormal Activity series now waiting until January to premiere its fifth instalment, there's a distinct lack of horror at the cinemas this Halloween. Indeed, Hollywood bosses appear to have been running scared this October with only the unnecessary and underperforming remake of Carrie flying the flag for the genre. With those wanting new thrills and spills having to get their fix elsewhere, here's a look at five of the best horror films released earlier this year that are now available to view on the small screen.Evil DeadMany groaned when it was announced that Sam Raimi's cult classic was to get the reboot treatment. But although Fede Alvarez' gorefest lacked the dark humor of the original, it's arguably one of the most relentless assaults on the senses in years.Warm BodiesPerhaps more gently amusing and unexpectedly touching than downright scary, Warm Bodies breathed new life into the stale zombie genre with its post-apocalyptic tale of a human survivor falling for a member of the grunting undead.The ConjuringFast becoming the master of mainstream horror, James Wan's haunted house story might have brought little new to the table. But like last year's The Woman In Black, its old-school shocks still packed a punch.MamaBased on a 2008 short film, Spanish-Canadian horror Mama also wore its influences firmly on its sleeve but its spooky visual flair, constant sense of unease and Jessica Chastain's performance lifted it above the usual hokey supernatural chillers.V/H/S/2Like last year's original, this second series of found-footage shorts certainly varies in quality. But Gareth Evans' Safe Haven, which sees a group of film-makers interview an Indonesian cult leader before all hell breaks loose, is possibly the best piece of horror you'll see this year.
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Warner Premier
Thanks to the versatility of human fear, the horror genre has given us monsters of all kinds: ghosts, zombies, mummies, vampires, werewolves, witches, pumpkin-heads, dream-haunters, drowning victims, clowns, twins, snowmen, robots, aliens, kaiju, mothras, spiders, birds, brides, corpses, karps, trolls, trees, bees, and boogeymen. And just as varied as its list of demons are the forms the genre itself has taken. Past its inceptive days of silent-era chillers, horror has leapt from deadly serious nightmare fuel to campy and overcooked torture porn, ebbing and flowing through this dreadful stream as the tides of public interest shift. The '90s gave us some of the wackiest horror turns we've seen, though berries from this bunch are generally looked back upon as pieces of cult favor or pop culture obscurity. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead threequel Army of Darkness —which borrowed only a few pieces of mythology from its moreover sincere original chapter, going compeletely off the rails in style and story — remains a horror entry that the world remembers with a befuddled smirk. With Evil Dead revisited in reboot form by director Fede Alvarez this year, the natural question was whether or not the film's disastrous successor would also earn a new lens. And although we wouldn't have been surprised to see Alvarez, or another fledgling filmmaker, tackle Army of Darkness 2015 with the luxuries of amped up CGI, we did not expect the ultimate reveal: Alvarez and Bruce Campbell, star of the original Evil Dead and producer of the 2013 incarnation, confirm that writer/director Sam Raimi — the frenzied mind behind the series and notorious kook — will be crafting his own Army of Darkness sequel, according to reports from First Showing and The Hollywood Reporter.
But the surprising follow-up news continues, extending to a more recent feature: 2007's Trick 'r' Treat, without even the benefit of early '90s nostalgia that has us compulsively keeping AOD relevant through the graces of sardonic references, has itself earned announcement of a sequel, as reported by EW. If you don't remember the '07 picture, it's because it didn't exactly gain widespread notice — a dark, comic anthology horror, Trick 'r' Treat failed to hit it big on the usually profitable genre's market due in large part to being crafty, creative, and weird. And although there's not a lot of genuine artistic praise to be doled out to Army of Darkness, that last superlative is right at home in the hands of Raimi's '92 flick. It's bonkers. And that seems to be the direction the horror genre, and maybe movies in general, are heading these days.
Universal
After bouncing back and forth between darkness and fun, earnestness and satire, we've landed back in the realm of "twisted." Not twisted like the Saw franchise, which in its conception was inventive but devolved into little more than the "let's see how much gore we can get away with" maxim. Twisted in concept, in presentation, in the exploit of the human imagination to conjure up something truly scary... and, of course, fun.
For a while, we'll reap the benefits of this new embrace of quirk and oddity. Of course, just like anything else, things will go too far — weird for weird's sake will overrun the horror world, booting truly eccentric pieces like Army of Darkness and Trick 'r' Treat of their place in the spotlight but not carrying their genuine flavor. And such an overexposure will usher in a return to traditional form: straightforward horrors, filled with fright and lacking in any substantial joy. But hey, that camp has plenty of gems, too: think they can match the straight fright factor of The Exorcist after this trend dies down?
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EA Games
For possibly the first time ever, there is news that will excite both lit nerds and hardcore gamers: Dante's Inferno will be adpated into a film, with Fede Alvarez set to direct. Although primarily a live-action adaptation of the 2010 video game, Inferno will also take inspiration from the epic poem by Dante Alighieri. For those of you who have never played the game (or been assigned The Divine Comedy in school), the plot will center on Dante, who must traverse through the nine levels of hell and the horrors they contain to rescue his beloved Beatrice, accompanied by the soul of the poet Virgil.
However, the juxtaposition of a movie adaptation of a video game based on a classic poem, directed by the same person who helmed the Evil Dead remake got us thinking about the kind of film that Dante's Inferno will turn out to be. After all, those are a lot of very different elements coming into play, which gives the filmmakers many different directions from which to choose. We decided to help them out and came up with four possible ways that Inferno could be adapted into a movie.
The Action-Adventure This version is the one audiences are most likely to get, and could be based solely on the video game. This version of events would include at least four major explosions, a slow motion jump that someone barely makes, and a passionate kiss in the middle of a battle. Virgil would play the role of wisecracking sidekick, who has moments of great depth. There will be talk of tie-ins with at least one Marvel character.
The RomanceTold from Beatrice's point of view, it's the story of the epic love between Dante and Beatrice, while she waits to be rescued from the inner circle of hell. Most of the film will consist of flashbacks to the times when they were together and happy, intercut with scenes of Beatrice being held captive. At least two male characters will also be in love with her, and one of them will be Lucifer. It will end with Beatrice and Dante's touching wedding.
The Horror Film This adaptation will focus less on Dante's resuce mission, and instead puts the greatest amount of focus on the horrors of hell. There will be enough blood and gore to fill three Saw films. Halfway through the movie, Dante will be unable to tell what is real and what he is hallucinating. Virgil will definitely die a horrific death, and Dante will barely escape hell, only to spend the rest of his life traumatized by the things he witnessed there.
The Period PieceSet in the 1300s, this focuses on Dante Aligheri writing the Divine Comedy. The only glimpses of hell that the audience gets are when Dante is reciting or reading passages of his poem to an audience. There will be at least three long, beautifully lit scenes of Alighieri writing that are scored with tinkly pianos. Someone will stand in a field while the camera circles them.
Now, all that's left is to wait for a trailer to come out and see if any one of these are correct.
More: Watch the 'Evil Dead' Trailer Bloody 'Evil Dead' Surpasses Its Source MaterialCan 'Evil Dead' Survive a Post-'Cabin In the Woods' World?
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We all know the Motion Picture Association of America really doesn’t have an effective parental ratings system for the movies. The MPAA can allow all manner of violence, while usually demonizing sex. It has no transparency, and its members are shrouded in secrecy. Most significantly, it doesn’t have a functional rating for movies intended exclusively for adult audiences. What it does have is the NC-17.
Unlike the R rating, doesn’t allow children to accompany their parents into a theater. On the surface that seems like a great idea. Some movies Aren’t intended for kids, and as such, the young ones shouldn’t be allowed in the theater to see them. Unfortunately, though, movie theaters do some of their best business from films palatable to kids and teens and, better yet, films Geared toward kids and teens. Without those sweet juvenile dollars, the movie industry would be in a shambles. And that’s why most theaters refuse to even screen NC-17 films. It just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective.
It’s no surprise, then, that movies that do get shellacked with an NC-17 rating due to depictions of sex, violence, drug use, or language that no kids should see or hear, almost always go through some kind of reedit to secure a coveted R rating. The latest example? Evil Dead, Fede Alvarez’ reimagining of Sam Raimi’s mayhem-and-mutilation horror franchise. It got its NC-17 from the MPAA in January, far enough in advance to cut out the most brutal bits of gore that prevented them from getting the R. Bits of gore that will undoubtedly be restored for the inevitable unrated DVD/Blu-ray release. It’s far from the first movie to jump through hoops to get an R and, you know, actually be seen.
So here are 15 NC-17 moves that got around the MPAA’s censorship, one way or another.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
More:'Evil Dead' Review: Better Than the Original?Why the Bloodiest Scene in 'Evil Dead' Is Good for Women'Evil Dead' Remake Softens the Tree Rape: Does That Make It Okay?
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Warning: This post includes major spoilers from Evil Dead and one NSFW photo.
Despite all of Evil Dead's great strides for strong female characters, there's one glaring element standing in its way: the famous tree rape. Sam Raimi's original film included a torturous first encounter between a young, beautiful woman and a demon-infested tree. In the graphic scene, the plant brutally strips her of all her clothing and violates her. Director Fede Alvarez's 2013 remake tries to soften the brutality of the original, but as it turns out, there is no such thing as lesser degrees of tree rape.
The sad fact is that the remake almost made it to screen without resurrecting this black mark on the Evil Dead legacy, but one anonymous producer insisted it be worked back into the plot according to a 2012 interview with Alvarez on io9.
"This is not a classic being remade by a big studio, it's still his film. It's the guys from the original. I didn't write one scene and [the producer] asked "where's my raping tree?" So *types on the table and whistles* raping scene, there you go. But it has to be way more terrible than the original."
What's sadder is that this producer may have been right. Back in October of 2012, at New York Comic Con, where the first footage of the remake was being debuted, the rabid fans were uproarious when star Jane Levy teased that the infamous tree rape would in fact make it into the final cut. It was a reaction that merited a furrowed brow at the very least: Nothing about the idea of subjecting another female character to the atrocities of the first tree assault seems worth cheering for. If anything, these people should have been gasping for some small breath of air strong enough to erase the thought of something so horrible coming back for a second round. Instead, they were jubilant.
Evil Dead fans apparently needed the reprisal of actress Ellen Sandweiss' heart-shrinking terror. The 1981 cut of her character Cheryl having her white, virginal robe ripped from her attractive frame as vines tickled her inner thighs, caressed her exposed breast, and spread her unwilling legs before one oppressively large branch penetrated her as violently as possible wasn't enough. They needed Levy's Mia to experience the same terror too for the remake to be faithful.
It's clear Alvarez did all he could to lessen the blow of the apparently essential scene in which Mia becomes possessed. Mia is hoisted up in the branches of a tree and bruised and lascerated by the vines but keeps her clothing and some of her dignity. Where the original took more time to hyper-sexualize Cheryl by stripping her down and capturing her from pornographic angles, Mia's torture is significantly less about making her a sexual creature and more about showing the demon possessing her as a violent, immovable force.
Still, by the time the scene has reached completion, vines again pull Mia's legs apart and make way for an over-sized branch to invade her vagina almost as violently as the oppressive branch in the 1981 original. While the scene may take steps to lower the sexual nature and heighten the element of possession, the use of Mia's private parts as the entry point makes it inherently sexual. Bottom line: It is still a very deliberate and disturbing rape scene.
It may be the film's biggest plot changes that allow the scene to have something of a purpose in opposition to the original's gratiutious, misogynistic scene. Mia being violated — mind, soul, and quite literally body — lends an element of revenge to her plight in the final, blood-drenched scene in the film. Not only is she surviving by taking a chain saw to her tormenter, not only is she exacting her rage for losing her brother to this evil, she's fighting back against that being which attacked her in a very personal way. In a sense, it gives the film a bit of an air of Kill Bill Part 1, in which Uma Thurman's character exacts bloody revenge on the attackers who raped her, and less of a senselessly violent, pornographic encounter with little point that we saw in the original Evil Dead.
Still, there's little to indicate that Mia's triumphant violence at the end of the film would have played out any differently had she become possessed by some less sexual invasion. Had she ingested the branch that led to her possession rather than having it freely enter her most private parts, would she not have still been left standing in blood rain with a severed hand and a chainsaw? Would she not still be fighting against this threat to her life and possibly humanity itself? Would she not have still managed to saw its blood-filled head in half with the aggression supplied by the very fresh loss of her brother and all her friends?
While the tree rape may have found a way to "work" in Evil Dead, in the grand scheme of the film, it's still completely and totally gratutitous — even for a movie whose tagline could simply be "oodles of blood."
Follow Kelsea on Twitter @KelseaStahler
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WARNING: The following posts contains major spoilers for Evil Dead.
Evil Dead fans have been gobbling up every tidbit of information about the 2013 remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 camp thriller, including the biggest twist on the theme: replacing Bruce Campbell’s Ash as the star of the movie with Jane Levy’s possessed Mia. The shift in focus was an easy peg for celebration on the part of women seeking a more level gender playing field in horror. Mia is giving us a potentially feminist alternative to Ash, but the change could also be a simple refresh button choice on the part of director Fede Alvarez. It’s Mia blood-drenched moments in the final half hour of the film that truly makes the role far more prominent and begs the question, does Mia’s powerful role change things for women in horror?
RELATED: 'Evil Dead' Softens Tree Rape, But Is It Any Better?
The answer is slightly more complicated than a straight “yes.” At the end of the film, Mia is buried by her brother as a means of killing the demon inside of her and when she comes back as herself, she’s eventually the only living member of her group of friends, forced to defeat the demon herself. Mia not only takes Ash’s role as the star, she takes his role as the movie’s central badass, and one who eventually sends the demon back to hell with a blood-covered chainsaw as blood rains from the sky. She’s resourceful, smart, and when she’s backed into a corner, she’s the one with the last minute surprise that saves the day: She rips off her own hand when she’s trapped (also an homage to Ash) instead of being rescued by a miraculously surviving friend with the element of surprise (like the spectacled buddy who saves her brother David earlier in the film). Basically, Mia not only survives: she absolutely pummels evil.
Still, she’s not the shining beacon of feminism, exactly. This last-ditch effort could be categorized somewhat broadly as the classic horror trope of the "final girl." She’s the last one standing, she’s rarely the blonde, and she steps up to defend herself in the face of death. It’s a story we’ve seen again and again, but up until characters Buffy Summers won our hearts on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, the final girl was generally the mousy brunette whose purity was her main trait. Buffy (as well as characters like Sidney from the Scream movies) was very sexually active, dispelling the notion that the final girl had to be chaste. Like Sarah Michelle Gellar’s heroine before her, Levy’s character takes it a step further.
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Mia, whose trip to the ill-fated cabin where she will spend the worst night of her life was inspired by her recent near fatal overdose of cocaine, is somewhat of a degenerate. She's not a sweet babysitter or a straight-A student or some pure being about to be corrupted, like Cheryl who served as the devil’s vessel in the original The Evil Dead. And with that, she's opening the definition of the final girl even further. It's something horror expert and Women in Horror Month founder Hannah Neurotica (Forman to the non-horror community) says is happening more and more in the genre, "One of the things about the final girl, back then, was that she didn’t do drugs, she didn't have sex, she didn't do anything immoral. Now we're seeing more of a shift that girls aren't actually going to be punished for engaging in those activities."
And that's just it. Generally, the more free-spirited, sexual girls generally go down first or at least earlier in the hierarchy of horror movie slayings, while the good girl is the one who triumphs. To some extent, Evil Dead doesn't abolish that tendency. Take Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) in Evil Dead: the ditzy, blonde girlfriend of Mia’s brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) is scoffed at by nurse and know-it-all Olivia (Jessica Lucas) as yet another of David’s many girls. She’s primed for falling prey to the villain (or devil taking possession of anyone he can get his hands on, in this case). She's not a prime candidate to be the final girl and that's still the case. That being said, she's certainly more of a "good girl" than drug-addled Mia, who isn't exactly set up for the final girl slot either.
For Levy's heroine, the places at which she breaks the conventions of the final girl aren't limited to her nasty little habit. Unlike final girls before her, including Jamie Lee Curtis' classic Laurie from the Halloween series, Mia isn't a babysitter with no need for depth or a backstory. She is full of rage, built on the notion that her brother abandoned her when their mother was dying in the hospital. We sort of connect the bridge between her anger over her past and her life-threatening dependence on drugs, and suddenly, she's not just a vessel for the spirits awakened by the book of the dead. She's a full character who comes into the film with her own agenda, acting out motivations and demons of her own. In many ways, she's introducing that side of horror to a mainstream audience thanks to a wave that has been building and continues to build in the genre.
Of course, it must be stated that Mia isn't some heroine gleaming in the face of a misogynistic genre. She’s a member of a growing group — and a sign that the shift that began with final girls like Alien’s Ripley is not so much a trend (which implies that it’s a temporary wave), but a permanent change in the fabric of mainstream horror. "A lot of horror films now are taking the character of the final girl and experimenting with it and taking it in different directions and that is a feminist act regardless of whether or not it was intended because it's allowing women to have more to them and a role in the genre and that alone is progress," says Neurotica.
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It's something that touches all areas of the genre, not just Evil Dead’s slasher category. In television we're seeing characters like The Walking Dead's Michonne and any character Jessica Lange plays on American Horror Story acting as not only formidable presences on screen, but as actual draws for audiences. Entire movie franchises like Underworld and Resident Evil are built on the shoulders of women fighting the forces of horror. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that, well, Kate Beckinsale looks pretty hot fighting vampires. The other factor is that the base of horror fans is diversifying, and fast.
A quick look at TV ratings for horror hits proves that. According to Ad Week, Walking Dead draws more women than supposedly lady-friendly shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta or New Girl, and Fox's bloody serial killer drama The Following ranks high among women as well. And of course, there's the Resident Evil series, which is a billion dollar franchise and has plenty of female fans of its own. Horror that pleases both sexes by delivering full characters with depth as well as guts on both sides of the gender divide isn’t just a step for leveling the playing field and raising the bar on quality horror, it's a necessary way to make sure a film appeals to the full breadth of horror fans.
Evil Dead's Mia may not be breaking ground, but she's performing the very important task of keeping the progression of strong women in horror moving forward. The more opportunities we have to see a woman so badass she'll rip off her own hand to kill the devil, the better.
Follow Kelsea on Twitter @KelseaStahler
[Photo Credit: TriStar Pictures; 20th Century Fox Television]
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Crafting a horror remake is always a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there is an implied obligation to the fanbase of the original movie. These fans, most ardent when it comes to this particular genre, expect the spirit and, to a certain extent the content of the progenitor movie to be alive and well within the narrative of the remake. However, were the new film to be a shot-for-shot remake of the original, it would equally earn the rancorous bile of horror fans. The task is daunting and unenviable.
Evil Dead remake director Fede Alvarez, on the other hand, is dealing with a triple-edged sword…a glaive even. He has to remake a classic, showing reverence to its fans and finding new story avenues, all the while dealing with the fact that the film from which he is drawing inspiration is so iconic that it’s become a genre in-joke. More specifically, the standardization of its central conceit made it the ideal basis for the most self-aware horror film possibly ever made: The Cabin in the Woods.
With Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard constructed an Aristotelian deconstruction of horror that reduced decades’ worth of titles to its most basic, primal forms. The core of nearly every scary movie is the idea of isolation; of being severed from society and thereby more vulnerable to any number of interchangeable supernatural threats. Simultaneously we so often deal with youthful rejection of adult supervision. The cabin in the woods itself is a mythic representation of that isolation, that freedom from supervision. It was Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead that permanently forged this representation; canonizing campfire iconography into genre lore.
What this means for the Evil Dead remake is that it’s not just a return to the world of Raimi’s universe, but indeed a double-dip into redefinition. For crying out loud, the titular cabin in the woods in Goddard’s film is a near exact recreation of the cabin from The Evil Dead. Stepping over that threshold again therefore carries an added sense of déjà vu. The curtains have been pulled back, and audiences are now hyperaware of convention. Clever reinvention, of many benchmark horror films but Raimi’s Evil Dead in particular, has already been achieved, and places the Evil Dead remake well in danger of appearing redundant; or worse, as a step backwards. How can the wheel again be…reincarnated?
Elements of the Raimi world, of the central setting, no longer belong solely to Evil Dead. In fact, Cabin in the Woods’ retroactive re-contextualizing can actually create an entirely new perception for contemporary viewers of Alvarez’s film. In tweaking the story construct from Raimi’s Evil Dead, just enough to establish its own identity and avoid the aforementioned shot-for-shot retread, Alvarez has made it possible for us to think of his Evil Dead as the last successful scenario executed by Hadley and Sitterson. Both the new Evil Dead and Cabin in the Woods, each nodding to the Raimi original, chart a bursting open cellar door and the reading of ancient words from a sinister book as their inciting actions. The young inhabitants of the cabin are then dispatched by a malevolent supernatural presence. The ancient ones are appeased; world keeps on spinning.
Is it fair to judge the Evil Dead remake against a satire that utilizes Raimi’s Evil Dead as part of a diverse arsenal of dissected mainstays? No, but that is precisely the connection that will be drawn in the minds of those who have seen both movies. So how does Alvarez’s film combat this inevitable comparison? Is the studio even aware or concerned about it?
When one views the new Evil Dead, apart from the correlation to Cabin in the Woods, the other major item of note is the film’s excessive violence. If the original Evil Dead was gory, and Cabin in the Woods a bloodbath, then the new incarnation of Evil Dead is a hellish parade of torment soaked in tanker trucks full of blood. Point of fact, it’s one of the goriest studio films in recent memory. Granted, the vast majority of these grisly effects are achieved practically so there is artistry at play that prevents the remake from being labeled as total exploitation. However it may be argued that the violence will create enough of a spectacle as to alleviate the remake feeling like white noise for the viewer in the wake of Cabin. Whether this is the studio’s intent, it will benefit them to no end.
There are also some gender role reversals at play in Alvarez’s Evil Dead that may aid in its distinction from Cabin in the Woods, but then Goddard’s film is also marked by significant turnabouts, so the carnival-like atmosphere the violence creates is still of vital importance.
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Remaking any beloved horror property presents a sizeable challenge for the filmmaker. However, the challenges faced by Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake — which premiered last night at SXSW — were absolutely Herculean. We’re not just talking about remaking a classic here: we’re talking about redefining a standard. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead was a watershed feat of low-budget magic and ghastly effects wizardry. It represents a turning point for the entire genre, and its name is hallowed as much as, if not more than, the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. On top of that, Evil Dead has already ostensibly received the remake treatment in its own 1987 sequel.
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The timing of its release also places the remake at tremendous disadvantage. We now exist in a post-modern, post-cabin-in-the-woods age of horror wherein the significance of Evil Dead has provided the centerpiece of the most self-aware horror film of all time. The titular cabin from Drew Goddard’s loving genre send-up The Cabin in the Woods (which also played to anxious audiences at SXSW last year) is in fact a near exact replica of the central setting of Raimi’s masterpiece. How then does Alvarez find fertile new ground to till, while still genuflecting to source enough to please fans?
Alvarez, who incidentally is a rookie feature film director, and the marketing behind the new Evil Dead, didn’t shy away from this seemingly insurmountable challenge; point of fact, they faced it head-on. The tagline on the poster reads, with considerable swagger: "The most terrifying film you will ever experience". Was their boast justified?
Yes and no.
Alvarez’s Evil Dead absolutely excels both as a remake and as a standalone horror thrill ride. It tips its hat in all the right places — the shell of a yellow Oldsmobile and a prominent Michigan State sweatshirt — and even utilizes, reservedly, a few of Raimi’s patented camera tricks. Surprisingly, it even includes references to Evil Dead II, but only where those references function in service of establishing the remake’s own identity.
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However, the diversions from its predecessor are where the remake is strongest. Part of the problem with a great many contemporary horror films is that believable character motivation often takes a back seat to contrived convenience. Evil Dead casts aside the now standard setup of young people escaping to a secluded location for unsupervised debauchery and gives the group a more substantial reason not only for venturing to the cabin, but for choosing to remain there as long as they do. This outwardly simple change keeps our characters grounded and amiable…where appropriate. There is also an interesting gender reversal at play in the remake, though to say more would court spoilers.
But is it the most terrifying film ever you'll ever experience? Probably not. However, were adjectives altered, it may well be in the running for the most intense and/or most gruesome. The tendency with remakes is to make everything sexier: younger casts, slighter apparel, etc. This is one area in which Evil Dead cannot be called a conventional remake. If Alvarez’s film is anything, it is not sexy. It is a dirty, savage gauntlet of pain and suffering. This thing is so grisly as to hearken in equal measure to the genre greats of the 80s and The Grand Guignol. These gory displays, constructed in overwhelming majority by practical effects, are as wickedly entertaining as they are disturbing; lending the film the levity of dark comedy and steering tone away from the less attractive “torture porn” distinction.
Evil Dead jumps and bumps, but rarely do the scares feel cheap. Eerie static images share screen time with pop-up frights, and even the grossest of gross-outs have a certain charm, which is again testament to the practical effects. Where we should be writing off these moments as exploitation, the magnitude of the violence becomes positively absurd and keeps the atmosphere light enough for the audience to enjoy the ride. The opening moments, just prior to the appearance of the title card, wonderfully encapsulate the crowd-pleasing spectacle that is Evil Dead.
RELATED: Bruce Campbell Hopes People Walk Out of the 'Evil Dead' Remake
The young cast assembled is solid, but leading lady Jane Levy (Suburgatory) is the clear standout of the bunch, and carries even the ghastliest, gut-twisting moments with poise. The cinematography is rather impressive; often succeeding in making the cabin feel like a lived-in setting as opposed to a mere callback prop. Providing an undercurrent for the scares, Roque Banos’ score is outstanding and artfully incorporates sound design elements from the original film. By the film's end, with all elements impeccably combined, it is clear that there is still plenty of room for fresh ink in the Necronomicon.
[Photo credit: Tristar]

So you survived the first red band Evil Dead trailer. You, for some reason, felt the inclination to watch a ghoulish lady split her tongue with a razor and witness the adorable Jane Levy from Suburbia get attacked by a tree in a way that would make the Poltergeist tree kidnapping look tame. Maybe you lost some sleep, maybe you desperately tried to wash out your eyes only to discover it burns... it burns! But you survived the entire traumatizing ordeal! Hooray! You wouldn't have to worry about seeing grisly and terrifying images from the reboot of Sam Raimi's 1981 horror cult classic until it hits theaters on April 12. Right? Right?!
Wrong. So very wrong. The folks behind the updated Evil Dead wanted to show you even more disturbing horrors from director Fede Alvarez's take on the visit-to-a-cabin-in-the-woods-gone-awry. In the new VERY NSFW red band trailer there's even more bloodshed (someone appears to vomiting a massive amount of blood into someone else's mouth), more creepy crawlies (one of the undead demonically looks out through a hole in the floor), and more squeamishness (someone appears to have a thread COMING OUT OF THEIR EYE OH NO WHY I AM WATCHING THIS SEND HELP). Anyway, see it all for yourself if you really feel the urge to. This will ruin your day. Maybe your weekend. Possibly your life. Enjoy!
[Photo credit: Sony Pictures]
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